Call for sport funds for indigenous girls

The federal government has supported a sporting program for disadvantaged women abroad but refuses to fund a local version for indigenous girls.

Netball Australia's chief executive Kate Palmer says a funding proposal four years ago for a program providing leadership, mentoring and life skills for indigenous girls through sport was ignored by the federal government.

Yet the government had provided support for the program in the Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Norfolk Island, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, Ms Palmer said.

"It's ... having some wonderful health outcomes. There's a safe place for them to go after school," she said.

The failure to fund the local program for indigenous women and girls was disappointing and frustrating, Ms Palmer told a federal inquiry into the contribution of sport to indigenous well-being and mentoring.

"(It) adds to our frustration we can't find a way to do similar work in Australia," she told the inquiry sitting in Melbourne on Thursday.

International organisations had also supported the program in the slums of India's capital, Delhi, Ms Palmer said.

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"The disadvantage there is obviously very extreme. But (we) see the benefit of sport bringing girls who aren't given the opportunity to go to school let alone play sport come together and learn to become leaders," she said.

"Development through sport does work."

Ms Palmer applauded the efforts of the AFL in indigenous inclusion but urged panellists not to treat indigenous girls in sport as an add-on issue.

"I see it really as a double whammy for indigenous women and girls," she said.

"As females in a female sport we suffer from all the things women suffer from - a lack of respect ... few women in decision-making positions.

"Indigenous women and girls have on top of that a lack of opportunity, racism and many other barriers to having an active and healthy lifestyle."